France here (although I'm not an employee anymore so these rules don't apply to me). > Do you have to take vacation time consecutively? No in general, althoug

France here (although I'm not an employee anymore so these rules don't apply to me). > Do you have to take vacation time consecutively? No in general, although some companies will try to push out every one 3 weeks in a row in the summer, when activity goes down a bit. > Do you have to take it at a particular time of the year? For the 5 mandatory weeks of holidays, no, unless specific situations. What happens in reality is quite often you have to do trade-offs with other people going in vacation, to ensure the service can still run properly. > Is it subject to some sort of approval process? Typical process: your direct boss signs off your holidays request and ensure the team is not going off at the same time, then you go to HR for the final approval.